Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design

RCID @ Rhetoric Society of America Conference 2016

The 17th Biennial Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Atlanta, GA attracted RCID students and faculty with its theme “Rhetoric & Change.”

Clemson RCID students Eda Ozyesilpinar and Sam Fuller presented alongside Dr. Susan Garza of Texas A&M on the panel “The Material Affects of Power in Collective Memory.” Eda’s presentation, “Seeing Foucault’s Mirror in Between: A Look at the Impact of Collective Memory and Power in Transforming Unreal Spaces (Utopias) to Real Places (Heterotopias) in Media,” examines the role of power as a collective memory in transforming imaginative spaces/places into visual-material representations; Sam’s presentation, “Affects of the Edible: Rhetorical Foodscapes and Transmedia Narratives Transforming Our Collective Memories,” conducts a New Materialist/Deleuzian analysis of certain “foodscapes” and their representation in both fictional and real maps.

Eda also presented on the panel “Power, Memory, and Identity” alongside two of her RCID colleagues, Firasat Jabeen and Dina Septiani, as well as Muhammad Waqar Azeem of Binghampton University, SUNY. Eda’s presentation, “‘Sufism–A Mystical/Spiritual Food for Your Soul’ says the Western Man!– Deformation of Sufism in the West” examines the way the Western civilizations interpret Sufism, contributing to the continuous transformation/deformation of the Oriental image; Firasat’s presentation, “Anglicization of Native Rhetoric,” adresses the problematic demise of local rhetoric in Pakistan at the hands of foreign rhetoric; Dina’s presentation, “The Power of Identity: Being an Indonesian in Cinema” discusses the power of identity in Indonesia that is represented in Indonesian cinema.

The panel “Game-Changing Rhetoric: Compassion, Community & Identity in World-building Play” featured a trio of RCID students: Nathan Riggs, Kate Hanzalik, and Dan Frank, along with Collette Aarand of Georgia University. Nathan’s presentation, “Compassionate Play: Teaching Empathy through the use of Procedural Rhetoric,” explores the potential of teaching and learning empathic understanding through the use of video games. Kate’s presentation, “Courageous Play: Gaming and the Good Life” asks, “how is the good life possible when knowledge is information by design, and when, as Lanier says, ‘different media stimulate different potentials in human nature?'” Dan’s presentation, “Constructive Play: Rhetoric and Writing in the Gamespace,” offers an exploration of using gameplay and game design as tools to create what James Gee calls passionate-affinity spaces in the composition classroom.

“Accelerating Agents, Rhetorical Objects: New Materialisms and the Precipice of Change” featured RCID students Nathan Riggs, Josh Wood, and Hayley Zertuche along with Collette Aarand of Georgia University. Nathan’s presentation, “Speculative Velocities and Dark Machines: Marx, ‘New’ Materialisms and the Rhetorics of #Accelerate,” explores the move toward posthuman performances by examining the “human” performance of new materialist philosophies as politics. Josh’s presentation, titled “Gaming Rhetoric: The Intersection of Affect and Object,” examines the way that video games expand modern conceptions of rhetorics by the melding of theories of affect and object-oriented ontologies. Hayley’s presentation, “HumAnimal Hauntings and Entanglements in Visual Media,” considers how one group of Others-nonhuman animals-become hauntings of material entanglement in street artist Borondo’s recent exhibit Animal.

RCID’s Daphne-Tatiana Canlas presented with Pritha Prasad of Ohio State University on the panel “Rhetoric and Asian American Identity;” her presentation, titled “The Unheimlichkeit of the Second Generation Filipino American: Exploring Quotidian Rhetorics through Vernacular Video on YouTube,” deals with the unheimlichkeit (Heidegger’s term), or home-less-ness, of the Filipino American, especially those who identify as second-generation (descendants) Filipino immigrants.

We all had a great time at RSA this year; thanks to everyone who participated!